A telltale sign that your conversation has been overtaken by anxiety is topic jumping. The more topics you jump to, the more powerful anxiety becomes, resulting in inefficient, frustrating conversations and a likelihood that the next conversation won’t be particularly positive. These six steps can help you have more focused, effective conversations.

Relationship change is hard because it challenges the archetypes--expected behaviors, reactions, desires--that we develop about our partner over the course of our relationship. We create archetypes about our partners early in our relationships--sometimes in our first meetings. It's often easier for us to deal with the flawed partner that we know rather than the mysterious partner with potential that we don't know.

A world with -4.50 vision (or worse) is awfully frightening, and requires a heightened sense of hypervigilance to get through. We can help correct your sight and perspective, so that you can see your partner (and yourself) through 20/20 vision and have the best relationship possible.

Simply being heard and understood goes a long way toward regaining intimacy. Our job in relationships is to relate, which means validating our partner’s perspective and doing our best to understand it.

In our first 2017 episode of the podcast Under the Covers, Stephanie Wallace and I talk about dating. We define dating as the period of time between searching for a new partner and defining the relationship either as exclusive or as part of an open relationship. Stephanie and I provide a bunch of dating gems for people looking to explore dating, including the following:

There are many therapists who claim to do relational counseling, so how do you know who to rely on to fight for your relationship?

If you're looking for marriage counseling or couples therapy, please ask about the credentials of your therapist. Our couples therapists have years of training in couples therapy. Most of us are licensed specifically to practice marriage and family therapy (LMFT), and our license requires us to have much more than the minimum requirements that I suggest in the blog post, which means that we have a significant understanding of how relationship dynamics operate and how to help you create positive, long-lasting new interactions.

We hope that our quality of services and our combined experience and knowledge about relationships will diminish any hesitations about the price of couples therapy, particularly once you begin to notice changes in the quality of communication between you and your partner.

Same-sex couples often experience a uniquely complicated process with their families of origin. This begins with coming out and identifying as an LGBTQ person, and we recognize that many people will be spending their first holidays with their families either as an LGBTQ-identified person or in a new LGBTQ relationship. This article provides some tips for coming out to your family of origin.

Once family members begin to identify and work through their emotional experience, it generally becomes easier to figure out how to do the relationship moving forward, which may include the establishment of clear boundaries, particularly if parents are stuck in anger and criticism. Establishing boundaries with families can be challenging for long-term same-sex relationships as well. We provide tips for same-sex couples in which there's a continual need for establishing boundaries with families of origin.

The chivalry narrative, a narrative where men protect and take care of women, creates double binds for both genders. It tells women that they have positive qualities that are worth protecting, but the ensuing protection communicates that they are weak and incompetent. It discourages men from expressing needs, wants, and desires while expecting them to be able to concretely express what we want and expect in the bedroom.

This article provides tips for couples seeking to attain more equal relationships by moving away from gendered expectations.

A couple relationship can be a venue for setting a boundary with your family of origin. In Episode 8 of Under the Covers, Stephanie Wallace and Jeremiah Gibson provide some tips for people seeking to celebrate the holidays with families while maintaining their adultness. They also talk about ways to establish new rituals for each stage of your relationship, rituals that may or may not involve other family members.

The emotional and psychological challenges that our military members face during and after deployment play significant impacts on their relationships. In Episode 7 of Under the Covers, Jeremiah Gibson and Stephanie Wallace discuss how military couples can improve their relationship during deployment, while a military member reintegrates following deployment, and if PTSD affects one or both partners.

Check out Under the Covers on iTunes! We've recently released two new episodes--one on substance use and couple relationships, and one on the experiences of military couples. You can also find us on Stitcher.

We watch couples and families experience the latter scenario, where each participant has a different perspective of what happened. In couples therapy, for instance, we hear Partner A's, perspective and Partner B's perspective. We are not interested in finding out which one is right or accurate, but we're paying attention to how the sharing of these two perspectives unfolds.

In Episode 3 of Under the Covers, Stephanie and Jeremiah break down this dance between pursuing and distancing. They discuss the strong emotional needs that may keep partners in the pursue-distance dance, and explore ways of effectively creating new dance steps.

Anxiety often shows up in the context of our relational life. Trying to understand yourself and your partner is an ongoing task and the stakes are high because the outcome is important to you. Meaningful connection is not possible without vulnerability. Anxiety, however, is optional. And even if anxiety arrives, how long it stays is up to you.